What Is With These GOP Candidates Fawning Over the Confederacy and Saying Other Horrible Things?

 https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/08/republican-candidates-doug-mastriano-blake-masters-gop-confederacy.html

On Monday, Media Matters reported that in 2020, Mastriano live-streamed himself going to the site of the Gettysburg battle and saluting a group of Confederate flag-waving armed members of the public, who were ostensibly there to prevent an Antifa flag burning. (This was, according to the Washington Post, a social media hoax.) Maybe Mastriano just didn’t see the giant Confederate flag waving from the back of the truck when he went up to the group and told them: “Friends, thanks for being here. I’m Sen. Mastriano. … It’s good to see you guys.” Then again, that same day he posted a similar salutation to a man wearing a half-American flag, half-Confederate flag on his back near Robert E. Lee’s statue at Gettysburg, telling him: “You’re looking good there, man. I can’t think of a better cape.”